There are five major avenues for how people arrive at your site.
Direct – A user types in your URL manually
Referral Paid – A user clicks a paid link or ad on some other website
Referral Free – A user clicks a link on some other website that you put there
Search Paid – A user clicks a paid link on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
Search Organic – A user click an organic link on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
All four areas need to addressed to maximize your potential. Here’s how you should be addressing these and what to expect.
Before you put a single line of code into production you should be thinking about SEO. You should have a good idea what keywords and markets you are after, prepare meta data, page content, titles, domain name(s), etc. This type of SEO work will pay big dividends later but it takes a while to get rolling so you need to keep this in mind from day 1.
Direct traffic can be achieved via PR work. Create a buzz, talk to everyone about the site, hand out business cards, run offline promotions, etc.. To get maximum bang for your buck you should be ready to convert this traffic into money. This requires a lot of effort and the traffic tends to be expensive.
Free referral traffic is a cheap and slow growing avenue however there are nice side effects that can be reaped in terms of Page Rank and association with a targeted community. Get out there and post in various forums (like this one), comment on blogs, write product reviews, contribute to Wiki articles, etc.. Post anywhere you can drop an inconspicuous link. Don’t make your posts look like ads or you’ll just frustrate people and your content will never air publicly. This also requires a lot of effort but the traffic is free.
Paid referral traffic is simply paying to place an ad on someone else’s website. This can be expensive but it is a good way to get your name in front of the masses.
Paid search is a simple way to very accurately target the exact kind of traffic you are after with very little effort. Define the keywords that closely align with your business and begin making bids on the major 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). This is a way to get a great jump start for a website but it can be costly. Overtime you will begin to see which keywords give you the best bang for your buck so you can adjust accordingly.
Summary: I suggest the following approach. Create some Google Alerts that watch for the keywords/keyphrases you are after. As the alerts show up in your inbox view each site and if there is a place to post a comment add something useful to the conversation and drop a link in your signature. Be sure to also drop links in various directories and Wikis. Meanwhile get that paid search campaign going. Don’t be afraid to put some skin in the game to jump start your website. Finally begin getting to know your community, talk with other webmasters and experts to find opportunities to cross promote each other.
This approach will get you rolling and over time other links will begin to randomly show up on other sites. Your Google Page Rank (PR) will rise after a couple months then finally your organic search visits will begin to pour in. Stick with it, slow and steady wins the race.